AN INDIAN student was the victim of a four-year State “foul up” of his visa renewal application and of a “Kafkaesque saga” involving an “abuse of administrative power” at considerable cost to the taxpayer, a High Court judge has found.
Ms Justice Maureen Clark made the remarks when granting leave yesterday to Sarvjeet Singh (27) to bring a judicial review challenge aimed at overturning a decision by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to deport him.
The deportation order arose after a college attended by Mr Singh closed down and he was unable to get certificates, required for his visa renewal, which showed he was a full-time bona fide student. His passport was then seized by the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) without appropriate explanation, appeal or review and was followed by “four years of extraordinary inertia and ineptitude” by the State in dealing with his attempts to regularise his position, the judge outlined.
Mr Singh was “a victim of an abuse of administrative power” exposing him to manifest unfairness.
Mr Singh came here in 2002, when he was 19, to study English in the American College in Merrion Square, Dublin, where his attendance rate was 87 per cent — 7 per cent above that required for visa certification. The following year, he enrolled in a diploma course in information technology at the Parnell Technology College (PTC), formerly Boyne College, off Dublin’s Parnell Street.
Ms Justice Clark said his attendance there was said to be high but was not capable of being certified because the GNIB closed down the college in late July 2004.
Mr Singh, who had heard rumours the PTC was to be closed had enrolled in another nearby business school from April but continued attending PTC in the hope his attendance there would be certified. When the PTC closed, he was unable to get certification of his attendance. While he did get a certificate from the new business school, it only showed 25 per cent attendance because he only started there after the PTC closed in July.
In October that year, the GNIB refused to renew his visa and seized his passport without explanation. The Minister for Justice then notified him he was to be deported because his level of attendance at his study course was based not on PTC attendance but on the business school certificate.
The judge said Mr Singh was not offered any opportunity to state his case before the Minister despite lengthy submissions from his solicitor, Con Pendred and Co, outlining what had happened.